change can be uncomfortable. It requires that you examine yourself and your practices,
and the result can feel like a dive into uncharted waters. But the ensuing journey is likely
to be exciting; it will provide you with renewed energy for doing your very best for young
children. Let’s step out of the box together and examine the journey of an educator as it
proceeds, in all its complexity, toward a more emergent practice.
The Teacher’s Voice: Emergent Curriculum
and Child-Centered Practice
Before joining the staff of the Child and Family Development Center (CFDC) in Concord,
New Hampshire, Bonnie worked for several years in classrooms that used a thematic
approach to generating curriculum for preschool children. She had never learned about
emergent curriculum in theory or used it in practice. She began her work at CFDC in a
toddler classroom, and now works with preschool children. Bonnie tells the story of how
she began working with emergent curriculum with toddlers, and what it felt like. She first
describes working in a theme-based classroom.
We had preplanned themes—that is, planned by the teachers—but we never
talked about how the children felt about what we were doing or how they reacted
to what was happening in the classroom. We didn’t even ask ourselves if the
children were enjoying what they were doing. The curriculum wasn’t cocreated.
It wasn’t a collaboration at all. We spent all our time trying to do what everyone
else thought we should do: letters and calendars for the parents because that’s what
they’d experienced in their own childhoods, or trying to please our administrator,
who wanted everything planned weeks in advance, and so on.
Notice that Bonnie pays attention to her own feelings of discomfort. She identifies what
did not feel right to her and why. Such self-awareness is a part of the reflective process.
Teachers can pause from time to time to examine their practices and where they came
from, noticing whether they are a good fit for their own values and whether they need to
be tweaked or subjected to large-scale change. Bonnie decided she needed major change
in order to make her teaching practice fit with what she believed about how children learn
and how teachers should and could respect the child’s voice.
This huge decision felt right to Bonnie. Like many teachers who change their practice,
however, Bonnie experienced feelings of disequilibrium as she went through a period of
transition in her new workplace.
In the first classroom I worked in at CFDC, with toddlers, I was struggling, not
understanding it yet. Working in collaboration with the team during planning
meetings really helped. I began to understand how they came up with a plan
Emergent Curriculum and Your Teaching Journey
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